Chicken kabob with rosemary

it is one of the easiest main courses you can prepare in no time for your guests.


ingredients

• 2 boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into cubes
  
• salt
• black pepper
• paprika
• 1 tbsp pepper paste
• rosemary leaves
• canola oil (sunflower oil or olive oil)
  

directions

In a medium bowl, combine chicken, spices, red pepper paste and oil together to marinade. let it sit for half an hour. Use metal or wooden skewer and pass diced chicken through the skewers. You can use vegetables like roughly chopped red, green peppers, cherry tomatoes and pearl onions as well. Cook until chicken is no more pink. Serve with green salad or onion salad, Ayran (Turkish yogurt drink) and lavash flat bread.

Turkish Borek with Mozzarella

Borek with mozzarella cheese

Ingredients

• 4 Turkish pastry leaves(prepared)

Liquid mixture

• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup cooking oil
• 2 eggs

For filling

• 2 cups grated mozzarella cheese
• ½ bunch fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped

for top

• sesame seeds and nigella seeds

Directions

In a medium mixing bowl, combine liquid mixture to brush pastry sheet. Whisk egg, oil, and milk together. Set aside.

Oil baking dish or tray; divide round pastry sheets into 2 as 2 pastry leaves for the bottom and 1 and 2 leaves for top. Spread one of pastry sheets according to your dish. Pour 2-3 tbsp liquid mixture and brush that evenly.

Spread the other pastry sheet and brush with liquid mixture again. Repeat the process until you complete 2 pastry sheets for bottom.Spread cheese filling evenly to the surface. Place one of the pastry sheets on top of filling.

Brush it with liquid mixture. Do the same thing for remaining pastry sheet and liquid mixture.When you are done, cut Turkish Borek into medium squares. Brush very top of it and sprinkle same sesame and nigella seeds then bake in 350 F pre-heated oven for about 45 minutes or until golden brown.

Tantuni

Tantuni

Here is the recipe comes from one of my readers who grew up in Mersin the place which is popular with Tantuni. You can see the recipe below in original way he sent...

I have graduated from Tarsus American College and I'm from Adana with a summer apartment in Mersin. This is how I'd do it:

ingredients

• 1 lbs beef or lamb, diced really tiny
• cooking oil
• salt
  

for onion salad

• 2 onions
• 1/2 bunch parsley, chopped
• olive oil
• salt
• sumac

Directions

1) Boil the lamb/beef pieces slightly. This will prevent it from hardening when you pan fry them in oil later. Add some salt to the water if needed

2) Finely chop the onion & parsley. Place them in a deep cup, add sumac & salt. Mix them by hand or a good utensil. Sumac should get concentrated in one place

3) Put some vegetable, canola or sunflower oil on a pan. Don't fill it up, just a thin layer to cover the pan is adequate. Get a glass of water and keep it next to your pan. Also get some ground hot red pepper ready

4) Heat up the oil and add the meat. Just after a couple of minutes add ground red pepper and keep mixing.

5) This is important: When the oil gets too hot, it'll splash around and will burn the meat. To prevent that, add a splash of water in the pan. Some of it will vaporize instantly and will take out the extra heat from the pan and the meat. This will keep the meat tender.

6) Around the time the remaining water in the pan is about to vaporize, cover the pan & the meat with the Pita. It's best if you use lavash as the bread. Pita in US are too thin, fragile and hard to this dish.

7) Let it warm up a bit and turn down the heat.

8) Take out the pita, place it on a plate. With a spoon take a little (not too much or it'll be too thick of a roll) meat, spread it along the lavash in a thin line

9) Add your onion mix, some salt and some crushed or ground pepper & roll tightly

It sound challenging & long but each roll takes only 1-2 min to cook, especially if you get your meat in smaller pieces. Too big and it'll be hard to chew on.

Bulgur stuffed mustard leaves

We have a kind of vegetable which has deep green leaves like swiss chard or collard greens. I have no idea how it is called in English but we call it mustard leaves. We normally stuff it with bulgur or rice and wrap it. I have already a recipe with the same stuffing so you can reach the stuffing ingredients here. You could also add some ground beef or rice but when I prepared, I used bulgur and it was vegeterian, there's no meat!

First I soaked the leaves in boiling water which has 1 lemon juice in for a few minutes or until leaves get nice and soft. Then trim the veins and cut into palm size pieces since it has wide leaves. Put 1 tsp stuffing on each leaf. Wrap by folding the edges of each leaf and roll it. Cook in the same way the recipe says.